


a different love

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Exes to Lovers, F/M, Jealousy, Regency Era, Yearning and Pining, persuasion au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24008452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: “Jemma draws her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them to glare at her toes. She has no right to be so irritated that he finds her changed, to be so offended that he hadn’t known her. But it just feels like salt to the wound that he is unaltered, as handsome and as endearing as ever. Not that it matters. Jemma feels that she would have known him if she were blind. She thinks that she would know him anywhere.”When she is nineteen years old, Jemma Simmons turns down Leopold Fitz. Eight years later, when their paths cross again both are forced to reexamine their hearts. A Persuasion AU.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 18
Kudos: 81





	a different love

**Author's Note:**

> i've been rereading austen a lot during lockdown and since i've wanted to write this au for a long time, this felt like a perfect opportunity! if you're interested in reading more on fossils and persuasion, i cannot reccomend 'jane austen: the secret radical' by helena kelly enough.
> 
> i couldn't resists dropping a few references to other austen novels in here, points to you if you catch them! i've also borrowed the supporting character names from novels by fanny burney and maria edgeworth, two of austen's contemporaries. the title comes from the song 'better' by SYML - it's been my anthem all through writing. i've made a little moodboard for this fic, you can see it on my tumblr [here](https://jeemmasimmons.tumblr.com/post/617219051389845504). i'm also on twitter @jemmasimmmons!
> 
> i hope you enjoy this!

"A woman of seven and twenty," said Marianne, after pausing a moment, "can never hope to feel or inspire affection again.” ( _Sense and Sensibility_ , Jane Austen)

**1806**

The first time Miss Jemma Simmons met Captain Leopold Fitz she is nineteen years old.

Her carriage is unable to drop her closer to the house than the gates, so packed is the drive with barouches and coaches. Rather than wait patiently and miss the first of the dances, Jemma decides to make her way up to the ball over the lawn instead, lifting her hem up to her ankles to avoid staining it with dew from the grass. She takes the steps two at a time in her damp silk slippers and, as a gentleman’s daughter, is given precedence into the party over a group of young naval officers arriving at the same time.

The youngest bows to her, a little stiffly, as she passes him, but Jemma is swept inside before she has the chance to get a good look at his face.

A further opportunity arises later that night, when they are introduced as partners for the second of the ball’s many dances. Fitz’s eyes are bright now, glowing with exertion and presumption, as he takes her hand. He leads her to the floor. Once Jemma feels the warmth of his fingers reach her through her glove, the beating of their feet against the floor starts such a song inside her heart that it is still singing long after she has returned home to bed. She presses her hand to her chest and smiles

That spring, as Fitz’s set of naval officers prayed for peace, he and Jemma are inseparable. At every gathering, he sits by her side. On every picnic, they walk together. They partner one another for every dance, their eyes in the candlelight seeking only each other.

‘Why the Navy?’ she asks him one day.

He pulls a face. ‘I don’t look well on horseback.’

They laugh, so suddenly and for so long that soon their sides are aching with the most enjoyable kind of pain.

When the summons comes for him to return to Portsmouth post-haste, Fitz goes down onto bended knee and makes a proposal Jemma is powerless to refuse.

That evening, however, her family sit her down and force upon her the imprudence of the match. Their reasons for this are painfully clear, and go like so: Fitz is poor. He has no connections. He has no family home. He is about to go to war, a war from which he is unlikely to ever return. He will break her heart, they say, even before it has learnt to love.

Jemma cries the whole night, then rises soon after dawn to go and return the favour.

The naval officers leave the village a week later, at the beginning of June. Jemma does not go to see them off, deliberately depriving herself of the chance to see Fitz’s face one final time. Rather, she chooses to hid herself away in a shady grove in the woods, allowing her tears to spill out onto her cheeks in painful solitude. She listens to the beat of the company’s drums fade away in the distance, taking all prospects of future happiness further and further away from her. Finally, however hard she strains her ears, both seem to vanish.

At the time, it feels like the end. Everyone who knows Jemma seems to echo this conviction, murmuring it to one another when they sees her decline to stand up with any other gentleman, or refuse his token of affection. They sniff, and turn away from her with a remorseful shake of the head. It is, after all, a truth universally acknowledged that a chance at love missed is a chance at love lost. To them, and to Jemma herself, it appears that her chance has been well and truly lost.

**1814**

Jemma is at the piano. Now twenty-seven, it is no longer her place to stand up to dance at neighbourhood gatherings. The young men would much rather partner the younger ladies than her, and, as an unmarried woman, she does not garner the same respect they are obliged to pay to the matrons.

To prevent them all from the embarrassment, Jemma never objects when the young people beg her to play a reel or a Cotillion, allowing herself to be easily persuaded by how prettily they ask. As her fingers travel expertly over the ivory keys to seek out her next note, she tries to quash the bitterness rising inside her as she watches the couples laugh and jump faster to keep up with her. It has been such a long time since she has been asked to dance.

At least, Jemma thinks with some satisfaction, they are not being artful flatterers when they ask her to play. Her skill at the piano is unmatched in the neighbourhood, so much so that when the conversation of a group of mamas to her right catches her attention, her playing does not alter.

They are speaking of a young party newly arrived at the village one over. It consists of two naval captains, one just married, and his bride. It becomes apparent that the unmarried captain is no stranger to the area, having spent a spring season there eight years before.

Stuck at the piano stool, Jemma feels a prickle of sweat on the back of her neck.

The young captain is said to be very handsome, and rich, where once he had been poor. He had sailed off into the war and returned not only with his life but with a fortune any gentleman would be proud of. The mamas quickly decide that his purpose in returning to their countryside society must be to choose himself a wife.

And of course, they say, any woman would have to be a fool to turn him down.

It is only when the chatter in the room falls silent and every eye turns to watch her at the piano that Jemma realises she has stopped playing. Giving the dancers an apologetic smile, she flexes her fingers, pretending she had only stopped for a cramp. Then she resumes the song.

As the young people dance on, the pounding of their feet matches the tumult Jemma feels inside her head. Her mouth is dry and her heart is racing as she tries to concentrate on playing one note after the other and not to think about how, soon, she could be seeing Leopold Fitz once more.

_Please_ , she thinks, an ache in her chest. _Please let it be a mistake_.

It is not a mistake.

A week later, Jemma is in the drawing room of her neighbour, Mr Hervey, admiring the needlework of his younger sister, when his wife Belinda sweeps into the room and announces to the company the visit of Captain Fitz.

Jemma’s head jerks up. She stands up with the others, but she moves so swiftly that she feels a rush to her head and fears she may have to sit down again before he even enters the room. The door opens. Fitz walks in. A breath catches in her throat as their eyes meet, fleetingly.

The moment seems to stretch on forever before Fitz looks away again and makes his bow to the assembled ladies. Jemma feels her cheeks colour as she dips into a curtsey, and she is infinitely glad when Hervey moves Fitz away to admire the view from the window. She drops back to her place on the sofa so heavily that she jars her knee in the process.

Her hands shake as Evelina presses her embroidery back into them, demanding that she give her opinion on whether the next rose ought to be pink or white. Jemma selects the blush-pink thread from the box, but her thoughts are elsewhere. Every nerve in her body is too occupied being acutely aware of where Fitz is in the room. Even though she can’t see him, she can picture in her mind’s eye the way he walks and the way he moves. She finds herself straining her ears to hear his voice speaking in low tones as he moves among the party.

It is almost as if, after so long apart, her senses cannot bear to pay attention to anything else but him. Which, Jemma thinks faintly, was really too bad. After everything that has passed between them, they can never be anything more to each other than indifferent strangers.

After a while, the knowledge of this is too much. Making an excuse, Jemma passes Evelina’s work back and rises from her seat to leave the room. Once outside, she turns the corner into the dark and gropes for the wall to steady herself. Taking a deep breath in, Jemma tries to slow her racing heart.

She had hoped that, as everyone always said, time would have been a healer. But it is no use. She has never wanted to heal from this. Even after all this time, she is in danger of being as much in love with him as ever.

The sound of a door opening makes her jump and press herself even closer to the wall. Two sets of footsteps leave the drawing room, passing just by her hiding place. She hears Hervey’s voice ask Fitz as they walk down the corridor whether he had found Miss Simmons much changed since he’d last seen her.

There is a pause before Fitz gives his answer.

‘She is so much changed,’ he says curtly, ‘that I would not have known her.’

Jemma’s throat burns as she listens to their receding steps. Then, she wipes her eyes on her skirt and lifts her head to return to the drawing room.

The summer slips quickly into autumn. Fitz remains within the Herveys’ society, which means that he remains within Jemma’s. He attends their dinners, card parties, and country walks, paying considerable attentions to Evelina and her younger sister Cecilia when he did.

Jemma watches them in silence, wondering whether his interest in them is genuine or calculated especially to hurt her. She doesn’t know which answer would pain her more.

Soon, she finds herself declining invitations when she knows Fitz has been invited too. Not every one, and certainly not enough to raise suspicion, but once in a while, when the effort of pretending his presence doesn’t make her body hum in awareness becomes too heavy to handle. Instead, she stays home, curling herself up on the window seat to watch the evening light fade away.

Jemma draws her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them to glare at her toes. She has no right to be so irritated that he finds her changed, to be so offended that he hadn’t known her. But it just feels like salt to the wound that he is unaltered, as handsome and as endearing as ever. Not that it matters. Jemma feels that she would have known him if she were blind. She thinks that she would know him anywhere.

One blustery afternoon, she turns down an offer to tea at the Herveys and walks into the village instead, her bonnet ribbons writhing in the wind. On her way back, she hears hoofbeats approaching behind her and steps aside to let the rider pass. As she does so, a blur of black passes before her face, and Jemma turns in dismay to watch a gentleman’s hat tumble past her into the ditch.

‘Oh!’

Grasping her skirt with one hand, Jemma places her boot firmly into the ditch’s side and climbs down to retrieve the hat. It rolls away from her, and she has to extend past her reach to be able to grip its rim. She slips, losing her balance, and is about to follow the hat into the ditch, when a firm hand takes her by the arm and pulls her back to safety.

‘Thank you,’ Jemma gasps, then feels her heart jump into her mouth when she realises who her rescuer is.

Fitz’s throat bobs as he lets go of her arm. This close, Jemma can see the flecks of gold hidden in the blue of his eyes. She hasn’t been close enough to him to see them since his return. She had known they were there, but it isn’t quite the same thing.

‘Thank _you_ ,’ he says haltingly. He nods towards what she is still holding in her hand. ‘For saving my hat.’

‘Oh.’

Dusting some loose dirt from its fabric, Jemma hands it over. She is not wearing gloves, and her bare fingers brush ever so lightly over Fitz’s leather-covered ones as he takes his hat from her. He seems to start, like her skin has transmitted a spark from her hand to his.

Their eyes meet for the first time since that day in the drawing room. A thousand conversations seem to pass between them that they are both too shy to speak out loud. Jemma draws her hand away and they turn to walk back to Fitz’s horse.

‘It’s a little bit wet,’ she says about the hat, more to fill the silence between them than anything else.

‘You forget,’ Fitz says wryly, ‘I’m used to things being wet. On board ship, it’s a miracle to find a thing that isn’t.’

Jemma lifts her head, her curiosity piqued. She would like to ask him questions about the world at sea, like to be privy to the intimate details of his life away from her. She wants to fill in the gaps. But she isn’t sure how forthcoming Fitz would be, and she isn’t in the mood to be rejected, so with difficulty she holds her tongue.

Fitz returns his hat to its rightful place, and is about to swing himself back onto the horse when he hesitates, one foot in the stirrup.

‘I’m…on my way to the Herveys. Can I accompany you?’

‘Oh, no.’ Jemma shakes her head. ‘I’m going home.’

‘Ah.’ She watches Fitz swallow, clearly battling between propriety and his desire to get away from her. ‘Then I ought to…’

‘Sir,’ Jemma says crisply, ‘I am perfectly capable of walking home alone. Please ride on to your engagement.’

Her tone seems to convince him, and with a curt nod he mounts the horse. Jemma watches him, biting down on her parting retort until the opportune moment.

‘Just so you know,’ she says, just as Fitz digs his heels into his horse’s flanks, ‘you’ve changed, too.’

Fitz looks down at her, just for a moment, before the horse lurches forward in a trot. Before it does though, Jemma gets a beautiful glimpse of his face, frozen with confusion, alarm, and guilt. It warms her a little around her heart.

‘You look much better on horseback, now,’ she calls after him.

Fitz doesn’t look back at her, but as he eases the horse into a canter, Jemma notices his grip of the reins slip as he adjusts himself in the saddle. She smiles to herself, a little wickedly.

However wrong it might be, it is satisfying to know that she can unnerve him when she wants to, just as much as he can unnerve her. They are perfectly equal in this still, at least.

When Belinda Hervey asks her to accompany the family to Lyme Regis for a holiday, Jemma accepts right away.

Ever since her encounter with Fitz by the ditch, being near him in society is more awkward than ever. Evelina and Cecilia’s attentions to him seem to have doubled, each of them vying with the other to walk beside him and sit next to him at dinner. With every scene between them that she witnesses, Fitz’s grin growing broader every time, Jemma feels just a little sicker to her stomach. The seeds of jealousy she knows she shouldn’t feel take root inside her and she fears for what would happen if she allows them to grow.

So, even though she knows Belinda has only invited her along as a kind of nursery maid to her two small boys, Jemma eagerly agrees to come with them to Lyme. The freshness of the sea in the middle of October and the act of running along the beach with the laughter of children at her heels might be just what she needs to clear her head.

At the time, she is thinking too much of the chance of getting away from Fitz, and not enough of who else might have received an invitation to the party. By the time she realises her mistake, it is too late to change her mind.

It is agreed that the ladies will travel in the coach to Lyme, while the men ride alongside them. Belinda bundles one of her sons onto Jemma’s lap, while the other clambers freely about the coach floor. Then, she drops onto the bench on the opposite side of the coach and declares herself exhausted. Jemma holds her tongue. The boy in her arms squirms irritably for a while, then falls to snoring on her shoulder.

Patting him comfortingly on the back, Jemma tries to catch sight out of the window of where Fitz has chosen to ride. Her heart jumps as she notices him riding closer and closer to the coach, slowing his horse down so Evelina and Cecilia can talk to him through the window. They flatter him, praising his riding and reaching out to touch the fabric of his coat. Fitz’s cheeks redden. Feeling nausea wash over her, Jemma closes her eyes.

She wakes with a jolt as the coach stops at an inn. Belinda and the Hervey sisters clamber out, exclaiming loudly about their need to stretch their legs. With a sleeping child on her lap, Jemma cannot climb out so easily. She edges towards the coach door, holding the boy closer to her chest.

A face appears in front of her, blocking her way out of the coach. Fitz looks hesitant, as though he is once again caught between disdain for her and what he believes is his duty as a gentleman. He swallows deeply.

‘Let me help.’

For a moment, Jemma can only stare at him. Then, with a small nod, she shifts the boy’s weight onto her shoulder.

‘Thank you,’ she says, her voice croaky from disuse. ‘How should I…?’

‘Just,’ Fitz breaks in, ‘take my hand.’

He offers it out to her and Jemma accepts. Curling her fingers around his own, she allows him to guide her out onto the coach step.

Fitz’s arm snakes around her waist before either of them can think too long about what they are doing. He lifts her off the step, and suddenly he is holding her in a way Jemma had given up dreaming he ever would, and his eyes are looking up at her as though they are surprised by the boldness of his body in touching her this way. He sets her and the boy down with meticulous care.

Once she is back on solid ground, his hand travels slowly across the small of her back, sending small tingles up her spine, and it takes a Herculean amount of strength for Jemma to look from his gaze.

She feels weak at the knees as she walks away.

Fitz does not hand her out of the coach for the remainder of the journey. Evelina had watched them together and decided this was a delightful game, insisting Fitz do it for her every time they stopped to stretch their legs. She jumps into his arms with a laugh that sounds like silver bells ringing, then pulls him away in search of a cup of water.

Once, Jemma sees him glance back over his shoulder as she lowers herself to the floor to slide out of the coach on her own.

_So much_ , she thinks glumly as she hugs the small boy close to her chest, _for this trip displacing the seeds of jealousy from inside me_. _We haven’t even arrived at Lyme yet, and all they have done is grow_.

The season at Lyme is at its peak from May until September, so by the time the Hervey party arrives it is all but over. Because of this, they have no trouble finding rooms in the town and an agreeable situation is soon procured in the same building as Captain Orville, a mutual friend of Mr Hervey and Captain Fitz, and a young man of considerable melancholy, prescribed to take the sea air by his exasperated doctor.

As trunks and boxes are carried up the creaking wood stairs, Jemma is accosted by Belinda’s small sons, begging for a sight of the sea. They hang on her hands, giggling as she totters under their weight, and assures her their mother will not mind.

Listening to Belinda fuss over the porter’s handling of her hat boxes, Jemma has no reason to doubt this as the truth.

On their way down to the bay, they are drawn in to stop at a small cabinet shop with big bay windows on Bridge Street. For a few coins, the owner offers the boys miniature wooden hammers, explaining that if they knocked into rocks on the beach they will uncover hidden treasure. The boys’ eyes light up and Jemma hands over the money, receiving three small hammers in return.

The tide is out by the time when they arrive at the beach, providing perfect ground for treasure hunting. As the boys scramble over boulders and squeal when they discover a crab, Jemma treads carefully over sandy pebbles, lifting one up to examine it before putting it back down again. The ocean makes a pleasant rushing noise in the background, smoothing over her mind the way it smoothed the shells in its path.

Her serenity is interrupted by the arrival of their party. Evelina and Cecilia run after their nephews, skirts fluttering, intent on prising their new toys away to examine them themselves. Mr Hervey and Belinda walk on ahead with Captain Orville, leaving Fitz and Jemma to fall uncertainly into step behind them.

‘What have you found?’ Fitz asks, after a few minutes of less than comfortable silence.

Jemma turns over her palm to reveal the latest pebble she’d picked up from the beach. She’d known it was different from the moment it had caught her eye, half-buried under a stack of cockles.

‘A curio,’ she says. ‘Or a fossil, if you prefer. The man in the cabinet shop told us to look out for this one. He called it a snake-stone.’

And indeed, the pebble she holds in her hand does resemble a curled up snake, with its spiralled pattern and evenly-spaced grooves cut out of the rock. Fitz takes it when she offers it to him and holds it up for a look. His curiosity so closely matches her own that Jemma cannot resist taking a step towards him to share in the admiration of her find.

‘Remarkable,’ Fitz says.

The warmth of his interest makes Jemma’s heart skip a beat.

‘Apparently they were once animals,’ she adds, suddenly unwilling to lose his attention now that she has momentarily caught it, ‘who roamed these shores as we do now. They lived ever so many years ago and yet they are still here.’

Fitz nods, a faraway look coming over his face. His brow softens and his eyes mist, like the foam on top of the waves.

‘It’s so strange,’ he says, almost to himself, ‘that something that was once so alive still manages to make its mark. Even if you once thought it dead.’

It is a such curious statement that Jemma has to wonder whether he is still talking of her snake-stone. She tilts her head to one side.

‘Captain?’

He looks up, blinking. He opens his mouth, and Jemma feels something lift inside her that feels suspiciously like hope.

But before Fitz can speak, Cecilia comes hurtling back along the beach and clutches at his arm. She pulls him along, laughing, urging him to come and admire the rockpool she and Evelina have found.

As Fitz is borne away from her once more, Jemma feels her hope sink like a stone to the ocean floor. She bends forward to retrieve the snake-stone Fitz had dropped in his haste to keep up with Cecilia’s quickening steps, running her fingertips over the places he had touched.

Jemma takes a moment to mourn the words Fitz would never have the chance to tell her, then pockets her pebble and lifts up her skirts to stride determinedly after them.

The Cobb is a stone harbour wall which snakes around Lyme’s cove. Its two levels, one higher and one lower, allow for walks to be taken along it whatever the weather – the lower being more sheltered if the winds are high and the sea rough, while the higher giving excellent views if the day is fair. During their week in Lyme, Jemma takes many walks along the Cobb, her skirts billowing about her and sea spray wetting her lips. She likes to look from side to side, to see the calm, ordered waters of the bay before her and then to turn to stare out at the wilderness of the open ocean. She imagines naval ships mastering the waves and feels a thrill of excitement deep inside her.

On one of their last days in Lyme, her party decides to accompany her to the Cobb. Leaving the boys in the charge of their landlady, they walk out together, choosing the higher walk as the day seems fine.

Soon, however, the wind begins to play havoc with the ladies’ bonnets and the waves start to crash with some violence against the wall, so they decide to seek out some steps down to the lower level. When it is her turn to descend, Evelina remembers the game she’d played with Fitz handing her out of the coach and insists that they resume it.

‘Again?’ Jemma hears Fitz mumble, even though she’s sure she isn’t supposed to.

He jumps Evelina down once, then turns to walk on, unaware that she has hurried back up the steps. Alarm surges inside Jemma as she sees what is about to happen. She starts forward, but she is too late. Evelina leaps off the steps, but there is no one there to catch her and her head hits the stone ledge with a sickening crack.

The company seems to suck in a collective gasp, frozen in the horror of the moment. Then, as the next wave hits against the wall, they snap into action.

Belinda and Cecilia set up an anguished wail, clutching at one another’s arms. Orville, who had still been climbing down the steps himself, gawps. Seeing Hervey’s face blanched at the sight of his lifeless sister, Jemma falls to her knees beside the girl and eases her face to one side. Blood is left on the stone slabs.

She hears a sharp intake of breath and turns to find Fitz crouching over her.

‘I didn’t realise she’d…I didn’t _know_ …’

He looks grey, his eyes clouded with anguish as he stares at Evelina. Jemma licks her lips.

‘Captain…’

‘If I’d thought,’ Fitz says, his words coming out in a rush, ‘that she wanted to do it again, I’d never have turned away, I didn’t mean to…’

His hands, curled into fists against the stone ground, are trembling. Jemma sees that he is spiralling and knows that she needs to pull him back, quickly. She reaches out and covers his fingers with her own.

‘Fitz,’ she says, as clearly as she can. It is the first time she has called him by his name, not _Captain_ or _sir_ , since they have been reunited. ‘Look at me.’

He looks. The sound of her voice, his name on her lips, seems to lift the fog from behind his eyes and brings him back to her.

‘Yes?’

‘We must have a doctor,’ Jemma says firmly. Evelina’s head is now lying in her lap. The girl is breathing, but her limbs are limp and her skin deathly pale. ‘You need to go into the town and find one. Take Captain Orville with you, he will know where to find one.’

Fitz is nodding, unable to tear his gaze away from her. Jemma feels heat rise to her face. It feels like he is piercing her right through.

‘Fitz,’ she says once more. ‘You need to go now.’

He nods again and, with a blink, finally looks away from her. He staggers to his feet. Together, he and Orville disappear into the ocean spray, hurrying back down the Cobb in search of help.

As Hervey, Belinda, and Cecilia crawl across the stone to take Evelina from her, patting her cheeks and calling her name, Jemma sinks back onto her heels. Soon she will have much to do – nursing to perform, tempers to soothe, and arrangements to make. This may be the last moment she has to herself for a long while.

So, before men arrive from the town to bear Evelina’s body back to their inn, Jemma closes her eyes. She flexes her fingers one by one and indulges in the memory of Fitz squeezing her hand before he’d left, savouring it before it leaves her forever.

It is late that night when Jemma finally leaves Evelina’s bedchamber, stifling a yawn. Her eyes ache from straining them in candlelight and her back is sore after so many hours bent over a low bed. She can’t wait to climb underneath her own bedcovers and be overtaken by a dreamless sleep.

There is a lamp sat on a small table outside the door and Jemma picks it up to aid her back to her own chamber. She is just about to turn up the stairs when the light cast from it illuminates Fitz, sprawled on the floor right by her feet. The unexpectedness of finding him there makes Jemma just about jump out of her skin.

‘Sorry,’ Fitz whispers. He gets to his feet, the floorboards creaking beneath him, and holds up his hands. ‘I didn’t want to scare you.’

Jemma shakes her head, one hand clutched to her chest. Beneath her shawl, her heart beats erratically. ‘You didn’t.’

As Fitz straightens up, Jemma notices how his cravat has come loose, and he has removed his jacket and undone his waistcoat. Through the whiteness of his shirt, she can see the movement of his breathing.

Much to her shame, heat pools in her belly. Jemma is well used to having her body betray her when it came to Fitz, but to have it behave so when he has spent hours waiting outside the sick chamber of another woman…

‘How is she?’ he asks in a croak.

‘Out of danger,’ Jemma tells him. ‘But the doctor says she will need plenty of rest and she cannot be moved any time soon. In the morning I will have to speak with Mr Hervey about taking Cecilia and the children home. He and Belinda must stay here with Evelina.’

‘You can’t go alone,’ Fitz says immediately. ‘I’ll take you all home.’

Jemma hadn’t been expecting him to make such a proposal, but she is grateful for it. The thought of travelling unprotected with two young boys and a traumatised girl was not appealing.

‘That’s very kind,’ she says.

Fitz shrugs. ‘I think it’s the very least I can offer, after what I’ve done.’

He slumps against the wall, misery behind his words and in his body language. Remembering the way he’d looked at her on the Cobb, Jemma takes a step closer.

‘What happened to her wasn’t your fault.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ Fitz shakes his head. ‘She…she trusted me. And I let her down.’

He slides gracelessly to the floor. With a sigh, Jemma lowers herself down to sit beside him. Their shoulders brush, but in the dark of the hallway with no one to see them, she can pretend they did not.

‘Evelina is…high-spirited,’ she says, after a moment’s deliberation. ‘Impulsive. You can’t feel guilty for not anticipating her whims, when not even those who know her best can. I won’t let you.’

Fitz lets out a long breath. ‘She has so much energy.’

‘Yes.’ Jemma chuckles. ‘An abundance of it.’

‘She never tires.’

‘Not until a task that is displeasing to her is suggested.’

‘She is strong-willed, and spirited, and when an idea takes possession of her mind she will not be persuaded from it. But I thought that was what I wanted, and now – ’ Fitz breaks off abruptly.

Glancing to one side, Jemma sees with surprise that his eyes have filled with tears. Her fingers itch to hold his, the way they had on the Cobb, but she has more self-possession now. She observes him in the candlelight and it pains her to see the dejection written on his features.

‘Jemma,’ he whispers, ‘I’m afraid I’ve done something rather dishonourable.’

There is a lump in Jemma’s throat. She swallows it, hard.

Of course he would see it as such. To fall in love with a such young, impressionable girl and to have her fall so hard after him – quite literally – without yet making an offer of marriage, was indeed lacking in honour. He ought to have made his intentions known to her family long before now. Instead of holidaying to Lyme, he ought to have taken her honeymooning to Portsmouth.

It takes a little while before Jemma can speak without betraying the tears trickling down her face.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘is there a way for you to make it better?’

Fitz seems to consider this. Then, slowly, he nods.

‘Yes. Yes, I suppose there is.’

Jemma nods with him, feeling a fleeting sensation of pain as she pictures his ring on another woman’s finger.

‘In which case,’ she says softly, ‘I’m sure you’ll do the right thing. Excuse me.’

She stands, a little unsteady on her feet, and retrieves the lamp from the table. Fitz does not stir as she climbs the stairs before him, taking the light and leaving him alone in the dark.

Jemma is not fated to remain long at home. While she had been at Lyme, her family had decided that they too would enjoy a holiday, and arranged to take a house in Bath. The coachman had barely set down her trunk before he is obliged to pick it up again and attach it to the back of the carriage.

Jemma spends most of the journey in a dream, her thoughts far away from the dreary road to Bath. _Perhaps_ , she thinks dully, _he has proposed by now_. Then, remembering the small church on the hilltop in Lyme, _perhaps they are already married_. Her stomach rolls, and she turns to press her face into the cushions of the coach in a pretence of sleep. It is no use to speculate. All she can do now is wait for news, and hope that someone thinks to tell her.

Certainly, there is no time for her to wallow once they arrive in Bath. Her family’s society is much desired, which means that for the first week of their residence, Jemma is obliged to smile and make small talk with a whole host of fashionable and dignified acquaintances every night.

To her surprise, she soon discovers that it is not her family’s company that draws them to their house. The gentlemen that come to take tea with them want to sit by her, be entertained by her. They converse with her with what she’d consider the serious attentions of prospective suitors, if she’d been five years younger.

Passing by a mirror one morning, Jemma flatters herself that she can see why. Although her trip to Lyme ended with excitement, the sea air has done wonders for her countenance. Her eyes are sparkling, her hair shines, and her skin has a radiance it hasn’t since she was a teenager. To see herself looking that way makes Jemma’s confidence rise, and she moves onwards with a spring in her step.

The arrival of a letter in Belinda Hervey’s hand quickly dampens her spirits once more. Her family is out, so Jemma takes the letter to her own room to read alone. She paces up and down, staring at the red wax seal winking at her from her bed. As much as she’d been expecting it, the letter’s arrival frightens her.

She wipes her hands angrily across her wet face.

‘Stop being ridiculous,’ she scolds herself, starting forward to break the seal and open the letter. Whatever news it contains, she does not have the right to be upset about it. In fact, she ought to be happy. If Fitz has proposed to Evelina, then it shows that he still has respect for her judgement, enough even to follow her advice. A month ago, this was more than she had ever dared hope for.

Despite this, Jemma’s fingers tremble as she unfolds the pages. When she reads the words _our_ _happy event_ , her vision blurs, and she has to clasp one hand to her mouth to keep herself from crying out loud. She almost throws the letter into the grate then and there, but something inside urges her to keep reading.

‘The wedding…’ she whispers, tracing Belinda’s writing, ‘…to take place before Christmas…’

A fat tear falls onto the pages, obscuring Belinda’s request to call on her when they came to town to buy wedding clothes. They will come as soon as Evelina can be moved, and then travel down to Portsmouth for the wedding, for to be married in his own naval port with all his friends is most desirable for Captain –

Jemma feels her heart stutter.

‘Orville?’

She must have read it wrong. She looks away, then back to the letter. The name has not changed. Breathing heavily, Jemma turns the pages over, skimming the words written there as fast as she can. There is no mention of Fitz. Evelina is to marry his friend, Captain Orville, instead.

Jemma has to clamp her hand over her mouth again, this time to stifle a burst of delighted laughter. She clambers off her bed and hurries to the window. Fumbling with the latch, she heaves the sash upwards to let the crisp morning air dry the tears on her cheeks.

Inside, Jemma can feel her spirits soaring. The song of a small chaffinch with a peach coloured breast, hopping across her windowsill, is the perfect accompaniment to the joy she can feel lifting her higher and higher.

‘He isn’t married,’ Jemma whispers to him, her smile growing wide with possibility.

The chaffinch tilts his small head at her, then flies away taking to the skies to sing her song of hope high over the chimneys of Bath.

The world does not stop because of the momentous news contained in one small letter. Later that day, Jemma finds herself having to hurry down to the haberdashery in town. A concert her family was invited to at the Assembly Rooms is remembered over lunch, leaving her only the afternoon to find new ribbons for her gown.

A low rumble rolls over the pavements as she closes the front door behind her, and by the time she steps into the shop she is shaking raindrops from her skirts, wide umbrellas passing by on the streets outside.

Greeting the shopkeeper with a friendly smile, her high from the morning not yet worn off, Jemma wanders about, picking up first a green ribbon, then a blue. She pretends to admire both, absently asking for their prices, but secretly know that this will not affect her choice. Neither will how well the colour will look against her dress, nor if it will match the flowers she intends to have woven into her hair.

As Jemma threads a coral ribbon through her fingers, her only consideration is which colour Fitz might like her in best.

So of course, when she hears the shop bell ring and a familiar voice beg the shopkeeper’s pardon for sheltering from the rain, it feels like more than just a coincidence that they should end up here together. In fact, turning around to watch Fitz brush droplets from his hate, Jemma is tempted to name it as fate.

It is at that moment that Fitz looks up and spots her. A brightness comes over his face and he almost smiles.

‘Miss Simmons,’ he says, offering her a small bow.

Leaving her ribbons on the counter, Jemma comes forward.

‘Captain Fitz,’ she says. After bobbing a curtsy in return, she cannot help asking, ‘I thought you’d returned to Lyme.’

‘Oh, I did.’ Fitz gives a small grimace. ‘I then left again as soon as I was able.’

‘I heard the news,’ Jemma prompts. Beneath her pelisse, her heart is beating very fast. ‘Evelina is to marry your old friend, Captain Orville.’

‘Yes, they are…very well suited.’

‘Oh?’

‘Mmm.’

‘How so?’

It might be Jemma’s imagination, but she thinks Fitz looks a little sheepish. ‘Evelina’s accident has made her rather more sedentary than she’s used to being. Orville enjoys sitting still. One evening I suggested he read her some poetry, and soon an evening turned into the whole day.’ He makes a small gesture with his hand. ‘You know the rest.’

‘I do,’ Jemma says slowly. She tilts her head to one side. ‘I suppose you could say that you are responsible for their happiness.’

Fitz holds her gaze steadily. ‘Yes. I suppose you could.’

Outside, the rain is beginning to ease and the sun starting to shine on the slick pavements. Realising that soon Fitz will have no reason to remain in the shop with her, Jemma knows that she must be brave and take a chance.

‘Have you been in town long?’ she asks.

Fitz shakes his head. ‘I arrived only last night.’

‘In which case,’ Jemma continues eagerly, ‘you might not know that there is a concert tonight, down at the Assembly Rooms. Did you know?’

‘No.’ He raises an eyebrow with interest. ‘I did not.’

‘My family would be delighted… _I_ would be delighted if you were to join us. I remember that you are fond of music.’

Her mention of their past together seems to soften Fitz even more. He gives a small huff of laughter. ‘I am fond of music,’ he agrees, ‘you are right. And you may also remember that I am especially fond of it when I can enjoy it with one to whose affections I have a claim to.’

This is such an unexpected statement, spoken in such a spontaneous rush, that Jemma can only stare at him. Her heart thuds as she considers his open gaze, trying to decipher the meaning behind his words…

Behind the counter, the shopkeeper is becoming impatient with the reams of ribbons left on his desk. He asks pointedly if the gentleman could help his lady make her decision.

Jemma flushes crimson, but before she can correct him, Fitz gives an answer.

‘The coral,’ he says easily. ‘I think it will look best with her eyes.’

Jemma is full of jitters the whole rest of the day. She barely eats anything at supper, and spends far longer than she usually would dressing for the concert. She smooths her sash, re-pins her hair twice, and admires the warmth her new ribbons bring to her outfit.

Fitz had been right. Coral does look well with her eyes.

With a low exhale, Jemma regards herself in the mirror. Then, with a secret smile, she hurries out of the room.

The Assembly Rooms are humming by the time she arrives, the hallways filled with murmured conversation and lace-covered sleeves that brush against her own when she walks by. The candlelight shines brightly against the peach-coloured walls and white plaster work, throwing fashionable society into sharp relief. But as much as Jemma searches, she cannot find Fitz.

Trying hard not to be disappointed – after all, the night is still young – she is forced to turn her attention towards the gentlemen hovering about her like bees around their queen. Each of them is intent on walking her to her seat once the orchestra begins, and Jemma smiles at them politely without accepting any of their offers.

By the time the concert room doors are flung open though, she realises dismally that she may have to. She waits, hanging back as long as she can while others filter in to take their seats, and as the crowd thins she is rewarded by the sight of Fitz standing barely ten feet from her.

‘Captain Fitz!’ Relief makes Jemma bold as she hurries towards him. ‘You came. I was starting to think you wouldn’t.’

‘Of course I came,’ Fitz says with a nervous smile. ‘You invited me.’

His words send a warm rush flooding from Jemma’s head down to the tips of her toes. She returns the smile, noting that he is wearing a smart new waistcoat beneath his jacket. As he turns in the candlelight, she sees within its pattern a subtle weaving of coral thread.

She could quite easily have stood in that moment with him for a long time, but now they are the last two people in the hallway and two pages are making to close the doors behind them.

‘Please,’ Jemma says. She offers him her hand, white silk gloves reaching to her elbow. ‘Would you walk me in?’

A flicker of pleasure passes over Fitz’s features.

‘I would be honoured,’ he says, taking her hand and resting it on his arm.

As they walk through the doors together, Jemma’s feet feeling like they are floating with happiness. However, it soon becomes apparent that they can’t go much further forward together. Since his ticket had been booked so late, Fitz is seated at the very back of the room; Jemma is right at the front. Dismay fills her as one of her gentlemen from earlier arrives at her elbow and offers to take her the rest of the way.

Fitz’s arm stiffens beneath her own, but before Jemma can apologise or make arrangements to meet him during the interval, she is swept away to her own seat by her obliging gentleman, who tucks her hand underneath his arm in a far more familiar way than he has the right to. He then sits beside her, blocking her view to the aisle where she might have caught another glimpse of Fitz before the music began. Jemma wants to stamp her foot with frustration.

The orchestra before her starts to tune their instruments, but her enjoyment of the evening now feels tainted. Just as the conductor taps his baton against his podium and the opening notes of the concerto flood the room, Jemma hears the scraping of a chair behind her. She cranes her neck around and is startled to see Fitz hurrying out of his seat and towards the door. Alarmed, she stands too.

‘Excuse me,’ she mumbles, tripping over several feet in her haste to follow him.

The door is just falling shut again as she reaches it, and Jemma has to put her back into it to heave it open again. She slips into the corridor beyond and lifts up her skirts to enable her to run.

‘Fitz!’

At the sound of her voice, he stops. Panting slightly, Jemma catches up with him.

‘Are you alright?’ she asks, scrutinising his face for any signs of sickness. ‘Are you ill?’

‘No.’ Fitz shakes his head. ‘No, I’m not ill. I…I just have a prior engagement.’

‘Oh.’ Jemma frowns. ‘I see. Are you sure you can’t even stay for the first half of the concerto?’

There is a slight tremor to Fitz’s voice as he replies. ‘I’m afraid not.’

Sensing how close he is to leaving the building, Jemma makes one last desperate attempt to keep him there. ‘Not even,’ she says, daringly, ‘if you are enjoying it with one to whose affections you have a claim to?’

Fitz gapes at her for a moment, as an unreadable emotion crosses his face. When he shakes his head again, Jemma’s heart sinks to find that citing his own words back at him had had such little effect.

‘Jemma,’ he says, ‘I’m sorry.’

And then he reaches for the door and is gone.

Hurt and confused, Jemma sinks into a chair by the closed concert room doors. The sound of the concerto beyond is muffled, but she no longer cares to hear it. When the doors open and the audience spills out into the night, she rises to join them as though she was never apart.

That night, Jemma tosses and turns in her bed, her head busy with unanswerable questions. What on earth could have made Fitz want to leave the Assembly Rooms so soon after he’d arrived?

She is sure his excuse of a prior engagement wasn’t true. If it had been, why hadn’t he mentioned it at the haberdashery? Why should it have become so important he kept it only once he’d sat down? He’d seemed so eager, Jemma remembers warmly, to accept her invitation before. And she’d been so sure she’d felt happiness radiating from him too as he’d walked her into the concert room. She couldn’t think of what could have happened afterwards to cause so swift a change of heart…

The thought comes to Jemma like a lightning bolt. She scrambles upright, blinking through the darkness as it forms in her mind.

She remembers his affront when she’d been pulled away by the other gentleman, the change she’d felt in his demeanour. And, before that, how he’d seemed to emerge from the crowd once the concert was about to begin and her admirers had dispersed, as if he’d been waiting for that very moment. As if he hadn’t wanted to approach her when she’d been surrounded by so many prospective rivals.

Jemma’s heart races beneath her nightgown. Had the seeds of jealousy she’d tried so hard to suppress in herself taken root in Fitz instead?

The thought feels impossible. How he could believe that she would prefer any of those preening peacocks, with their stuffy manor houses and simpering flatteries, to him, is beyond her belief. It is ridiculous. They are unreal, flights of fancy, and he is…he is…

Jemma curls onto her side and tucks her bedclothes up beneath her chin. A few months ago, when she was still angry with him for wounding her pride, thinking he was jealous of rivals for her affections would have brought her such a smug satisfaction. Now, it horrifies her. She doesn’t sleep. She lies awake, agonising over how to prove to Fitz that he is wrong.

The morning brings no relief for her pains. Before eleven o’clock, the Herveys are on her doorstep, newly arrived in town and desperate for her companionship. Soon, Jemma finds herself being pulled along the street to the house they have taken, her bonnet lopsided and her arms claimed on either side by Belinda and Cecilia. Evelina and Captain Orville dawdle behind, their eyes locked, lovestruck, together.

Jemma’s boredom and infuriation at being stuck having tea with them is quickly dispelled, however, when the drawing room door opens and Fitz enters behind Mr Hervey. He starts to see her sitting on the sofa with a teacup in her hand, and Jemma watches guilt flare in his eyes as he lingers on the threshold.

When Belinda invites him to sit down and take tea with them, he shakes his head.

‘I, um, have some letters to write,’ he mutters, gesturing blindly to a table by the window. ‘But please, don’t stop on my account.’

The Herveys have no intention to. As Fitz spreads his coat tails to sit and write, they chatter to Jemma about wedding plans and honeymoon choices, all while completely unaware of how distracted she is. Talk of cake and white bonnets goes right over Jemma’s head. Her mind is fully occupied on how she could possibly get Fitz alone to speak to him.

It is not long before the subject around the tea table turns to love. With a newly engaged couple in the room, both so fond of poetry and each other, it could hardly turn otherwise. Jemma slumps in her chair, her gaze trained over the shoulders of her companions, to where Fitz is writing, his profile perfectly framed in the window. _If only_ , she thinks, _he would look at me_.

The sound of her name makes her jump, and her tea sloshes over onto her saucer.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she says. ‘What was the question?’

Her creativity, it seems, is needed. Not one of them can decide on the best definition of love, the most encompassing description. They cannot put into words the most intense feeling of humanity, yet somehow they believe that she can succeed where they have failed. Jemma almost laughs out loud.

She is about to shake her head, to beg off having to give an answer, when her fingers catch on a lump in her pocket and she stops. She is wearing the same dress she’d worn on the beach in Lyme and her snake-stone is still in the pocket. Jemma’s fingers curl around it, and suddenly an idea starts to form in her mind.

Looking up, she sees that Fitz’s pen has frozen over his page. He too is waiting to hear what she has to say.

‘Love, I believe,’ Jemma says, raising her voice solely for his benefit, ‘is just like a fossil. Just at the moment you think that it’s gone, you find that it remains. And that it always has.’

She holds her breath, watching for Fitz’s reaction. His face is agonisingly obscured from her gaze by the reflection of light from the window, but after a moment, he pushes aside the page he had been writing on. Taking up another, he puts pen to paper once more in a frenzy of activity.

Her words have far less of an effect on the Herveys. Unsatisfied, they continue to discuss the subject, offering definitions of increasing sensibility. Jemma’s agitation increases too, but she dares not look back over at Fitz. It is all she can do to keep her heart from beating out of her chest as it is.

She hears the scrape of his chair as he gets up. A hand appears in front of her, offering her a folded up letter. Fitz’s face is full of emotion when she looks up at him, but he doesn’t linger long enough for her to understand it. As soon as his letter has passed from his hand to hers, he turns sharply and leaves the room.

The Herveys are so absorbed in their own discussion that they don’t even notice his departure. For once, Jemma is thankful for their self-centred characters as it allows her to break into the letter unobserved.

It takes her a little while, her hands shaking as she unfolds the pages. It feels like there is too little air in her lungs, and then, as she reads the words Fitz had spilled onto the page for her, it all returns in a rush. A feeling swells inside her that she is sure it too large for one body to hold on its own. She and the Herveys, it seems, have been neglectful in their definitions. They have completely omitted the fact that love needs to be shared.

Her head spinning, Jemma gets to her feet. She pushes the letter into her pocket beside the snake-stone and starts forward. She sweeps past the Herveys and out the door without another word. As her feet take the stairs two at a time, the last sentence of Fitz’s letter repeats inside her mind, over and over again like a prayer.

_Tell me that I am not too late_.

There is a small park opposite the Herveys’ house, lined with thick evergreens to give coverage even in the depth of winter. When Jemma flies out of the front door, it is to this park that she runs to. She isn’t sure quite how she knows that Fitz will be there, but she does. She knows it with all the certainty of a compass on one of his ships, secure in the knowledge that it will bring him home.

Plenty of people turn to stare at her as she hurries through the gate, but Jemma doesn’t care. How could she, when she can see Fitz standing at the bottom of the avenue? She runs faster.

‘Fitz!’

His head lifts, but it is a moment or two before he turns around to see her, almost as if he can’t quite believe she has followed him.

‘Miss Simmons?’ he says, then quickly holds out his hands to help steady her as she skids to a halt beside him.

Jemma’s lungs are burning as she fights to catch her breath. As wonderful as it is to feel his fingers brush against her skin, they have more pressing matters to attend to. Straightening up, she reaches into her pocket for the letter.

‘You’re not too late,’ she gasps, holding it up for him to see. ‘I promise you, you’re not. You never could be.’

Fitz’s eyes had widened at the sight of his letter; with these words, they turn misty in disbelief. He looks at her, and must find something in her expression that reassures him, because he starts to smile. Stepping forward, he catches her face in both his hands and kisses her.

Clutching at his wrists, her letter drifting to the ground beneath their feet, Jemma kisses him back. She shares with him the gift he has given her, and the love he has offered her. She offers it back to him, with both hands and a fully open heart.

Fitz’s fingers trail across her cheeks as he pulls away.

‘Jemma,’ he says, her name sounding like something precious on his lips. ‘I have to tell you…’

Jemma shakes her head. There is a warmth spreading through her body, the way it feels when the sun has come out. ‘Shh,’ she says, ‘it’s alright.’

‘But I…’ Fitz takes hold of both her hands. He locks their fingers together, a question and an answer all in one. ‘I have to tell you. You _must_ know.’

There is a part of Jemma that feels she already knows what he is going to say. Maybe she has always known it, even when he hadn’t known himself.

‘I have loved,’ Fitz whispers to her, ‘no one else but you.’

With a slight smile, Jemma closes her eyes. She leans forward until their foreheads are touching and doubts that she will ever feel a happiness quite like this ever again.

**1815**

They marry in the spring, nine years almost to the day from their first meeting.

It isn’t likely to be an easy life. Jemma knows this, knows that the life of a sea-captain’s wife is bound to be a life of two halves. There will be the calm and the order of time spent on land, followed by the wildness when he is called to sea. But Jemma remembers the excitement she’d felt standing on the Cobb, looking from one world to the other. When Fitz slips a ring of gold onto her finger and promises to love her for the rest of his life, she is not afraid. It may not be an easy life, but it will certainly be one filled with love.

She is at the piano again. The house they have taken together in Portsmouth has a handsome instrument, and once more Jemma is taking satisfaction from how well she plays. This time, though, she is marvelling at how she can continue to hit the right notes while her husband is planting a string of kisses down the back of her neck.

She bites her lip in delight as he hits a particularly sensitive spot, and her fingers quiver over the keys.

Fitz gives a triumphant noise and collapses beside her on the stool.

‘I win,’ he says, breathlessly.

Jemma looks at him and sees the rest of her life.

‘Yes,’ she whispers, ‘I suppose you do.’

With a grin, Fitz leans forward to kiss her on the lips, his mouth soft and tender. Jemma allows the kiss to move her, his reward for winning their game. She is beginning to realise now why the church preaches marriage as a gift from God. Some of the things her husband can do with his tongue are nothing short of heavenly.

‘Do you think,’ Fitz murmurs, ‘that we’d have been this happy if we’d married all those years ago?’

Jemma gives a small huff of laughter. ‘That’s an odd thing to ask.’

‘I know. But do you?’

They have pulled apart now, but the piano stool is too short to allow either of them much room. Not that they want it. Since their marriage, Jemma isn’t sure they have been more than an arm’s length apart longer than a few minutes.

She considers the weight of Fitz’s question.

‘Perhaps,’ she says eventually. ‘But I…I don’t regret saying no the first time.’

Fitz cocks his head to one side. ‘You don’t?’

‘No,’ Jemma tells him, ‘but not because I didn’t love you then. I did, and I have every day since. It’s just that now…’

She takes his hand and holds it up, pressing it against her own so that their rings clink together. Over their fingers, she can see unguarded affection shining in Fitz’s eyes.

‘We’re different people, now. We love each other differently. It hasn’t replaced that early love, but it’s made it better. It’s made it permanent.’

‘Enduring,’ Fitz says. He nods to the top of the piano. ‘Like our fossil.’

Jemma looks with a smile to the snake-stone, resting where they both can see it beside her sheets of music.

‘Precisely,’ she replies. ‘And there is no doubt in my mind that our love will linger on long after we are both gone. Even,’ she adds, lowering their hands to rest them on the curve of her abdomen, ‘if only in a memory.’

Fitz’s grin broadens as he grasps her meaning. When he tilts her chin upwards to kiss her again, Jemma knows that he is contented with her answer. She is about to lean forward to deepen their kiss when Fitz pulls back, making her lips chase his as he stands up.

‘What do you say,’ he says, ‘to a dance?’

Jemma laughs at his extended hand. ‘But if I’m dancing, who is left to play for us?’

Fitz hums in pretended consideration. ‘I believe I can recollect the tune,’ he tells her.

He lifts her to her feet and leads her away from the piano into the centre of the room. As he takes her into his arms and they start to sway together on the hardwood floors, Jemma cannot help but feel like this is how it was always meant to be. For, while it might not be universally acknowledged, it is certainly true for her and Fitz that a chance at love lost was just a chance waiting to be found again.


End file.
